


a way to break in

by secondlifetime



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Ambiguous Relationships, Enemies to Friends, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, M/M, it's literally just a progression of their relationship... if it were nice and chill, much more fluff than the prompt allowed, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29334519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondlifetime/pseuds/secondlifetime
Summary: “I wished for you when I was younger, you know?” Esteban turns to look at Checo, who is looking at him intensely, one eyebrow raised. The face that saystell me more. “I wished for a minion.”
Relationships: Esteban Ocon & Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon/Sergio Pérez
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: F1 Soup Kitchen Chocolate Box 2021





	a way to break in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [legendofthefireemblem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendofthefireemblem/gifts).



> i'm going to come out and say that this is very loosely a genshin impact au but i didn't tag it as such because i want to have some dignity. thank you vio for organising this fic exchange and wow i'm nervous for this but anyway happy valentine's day!! i hope you have a great valentine's/friendship day :D

Esteban wishes for a minion on a paper lantern when he is ten years old. 

He inks a crude smiley face, and then a smaller, cruder smiley face below it, and marks the big one as  _ Esteban _ in penmanship drilled into him since he was three. The small one is marked, rather flatteringly,  _ Minion _ , and then as an afterthought,  _ >:). _ His father takes one look at it and bursts into laughter, open-mouthed and bright (which, how dare he invalidate his dreams?).

“You could wish for better things than that on a day like this,” he says, sitting on the porch, in the wooden rocking chair that smells faintly of mothballs and freshly-thawed ice. “Like a courageous heart, or a better sword—”

“But I wouldn’t need those things if I had a good minion? They’d beat people up for me,” Esteban tugs the edges of the lantern into shape, catching the wind blowing through their estate like it always does, for the butler to light up the ball of cloth sitting in the middle with the lighter. “It’d be so cool.” The lantern glows its papery-thin orange light, slowly floating through the air, paper walls flapping in the breeze - his inky wish carries through the sky and melts into the constellations overhead and the swarms of bright orange paper balls rising in the distance from the city and the houses that dot the countryside. 

“Well, let’s hope the gods catch your wish, then,” his father stands by his side and ruffles his hair as they watch the lanterns disappear into the night sky like the fireflies around their estate.

A week later, his father disappears.  _ Eaten by a crawler on the supply route, _ whisper the maids, but Esteban hopes and hopes and hopes his father is safe. They find him in a hole gashed into the ground by a creature’s claws that are probably closer, size-wise, to Esteban’s height, but—

A week after that, his father never learns to walk again.

.

In the better half of a dream sits Esteban's childhood home, red-roofed and portly in the rolling, green-grassed hills. The mailbox leans to the left where it's been dug into the ground, mirroring the direction of the wind, and the sound of cows carries across vast distances of pasture, the rustling of wheat and radish leaves gentle in the breeze. In the better half of a dream Esteban is sitting on the doorsteps, all the patience and curiosity of a fourteen-year-old, as the carriage pulls into the entry road, pulled by trusty draft horses he knows by name and sound. 

His shoes and socks are slathered in mud where he’s been wading in ponds for frogs and water lily bulbs. There’s a clasp missing on his suspenders but nobody will scold him for it. There’s a beetle next to him in a jar that’s been provided with the luxury of a single branch and an extra caterpillar in case it gets hungry. He’s certainly in no shape to receive guests of any calibre, but he sits on the steps of his childhood home anyway, awaiting a guest who is pulling into the entry road in the family carriage. Esteban pretends that he doesn’t try to steal a glimpse of the person through the tinted windows (in truth, he only stops himself because he knows he must look stupid to the person inside who can clearly see him straining to take a peek).

The draft horses stop at the front door and the coachman pulls the door open to the carriage. The first thing Esteban notices is the shine of the shoes of its passenger: brilliant white, so shiny Esteban can see the reflection of his mud-stained face in it, and the pristine condition of the boy’s - older than him for sure, but still a boy - button-up, which means that there are two impressions Esteban first crafts in his head:

  1. The boy is insufferably clean, which means:
  2. Esteban doesn’t like him.



The boy with the infuriatingly parted-and-gelled hair peers over him and Esteban scrambles to full height - still coming to his chest - with a deepening wrinkle in the middle of his forehead. He smells like... dragonfruit? The coachman claps a friendly hand on the boy’s shoulder and says:

“Esteban, he’s your aide. Checo, say hello.”

The boy -  _ Checo  _ \- says nothing. Esteban can feel the start of a migraine coming on.

.

Checo tells him to tie his shoelaces properly when he can’t be bothered to tie them on his own, and towers over him as Esteban has to crouch down to tie them bunny-ears-style because he’s never learnt the fast way. Checo tells him to eat his breakfast and not just skip it because he’s lazy. He makes sure Esteban turns up on time for his calligraphy lessons and then swordsmanship practice even though Checo himself uses a polearm - a great weapon made of metal that shimmers when struck, given to him upon arrival at his father’s room, one that makes the magpie in him burn with jealousy because his own practice sword is made of a dull wood.

( _ “My son, I’ve been waiting for you,” his father had smiled, pale and fragile and so disturbingly happy Esteban felt sick to his stomach. My son, he’d said. As if he’d birthed him himself. Esteban still gets shivers at the memory. _ )

Worst of all, Checo insists on sitting three feet away in the clearing while Esteban practises his magic even though Checo himself doesn’t have a lick of it. He just watches Esteban deconstruct shit - like an old wardrobe to its wooden planks and metal screws - like he understands, sitting there with his ridiculous stone-still face reading a book he probably stole from Esteban’s dresser, underneath the tree shading the pages just right from the setting bloody orange sun, when he doesn’t. And never will, if Esteban has his way, because he doesn’t need one more thing Checo can pull from under him. He’s somehow already got his father underneath his thumb, but if Esteban has to share his magic?

He might have to deconstruct Checo. He’s never gotten away with murder before but it  _ might  _ just work.

“Your form is wrong,” Checo says, not looking from his book, as Esteban attempts to deconstruct a chicken egg into a yolk and a shell but ends up just cracking it. Esteban tries not to snap  _ What do you know about it? _ because he’s the bigger person, he’s better than this boy who ruins his life by just being in his presence, he’s—

“What do you know about it?” His tone is sharp and defensive, enough to scare people who don’t know what they’re doing, but as always Checo just  _ has  _ to interfere.

“Enough to know that you’re only going to crack it. Here,” he gets up and gets dangerously close, and Esteban is just about to walk away - half out of fear and half out of spite - when Checo grips his wrists and moves his hands, releasing the tension in his wrists that lock his hands in the wrong position and positioning them into something that resembles the picture in Esteban’s old reference book more. “Try it now.”

Esteban (begrudgingly) refocuses again on taking apart the egg, splitting it into its component parts, the speckled shell and the glistening yolk like the sunset-stained sky, the yellowish white—

And the egg is lying on the dirt, the shell and the yolk and the white in three separate blobs.

“Told you,” Checo says, a half-smile tugging at that infuriatingly smug mouth, and Esteban has to use all his power and a little more to contain the irritation that wells up in him like an open wound bleeding, mixed with the strangest cocktail of begrudging gratitude, anger and a confusing pinch of awe, just to fuck with Esteban’s feelings, which is all conveniently relayed to Pierre when he climbs up the roof that night under a summer night sky. The fireflies come in bright swarms around the farm during this time of the year, so Pierre also brings a jar of fireflies to read letters from family and friends with - Pierre goes to school in the city during the non-harvesting season, but this year has been particularly full of radishes that need to be harvested in the summer. He reads letters from friends in the city that Esteban secretly harbours jealousy for, having been homeschooled for all his life.

“Pierre, he read my reference books. Without my knowledge,” Esteban grouses.

“He’s not a bad person?” Pierre says over a mouthful of sandwich. “He brings me and  _ maman  _ jam sometimes. He makes his own berry jam, I think. It’s in this sandwich,” and then Pierre waves the sandwich in his face, to which Esteban gently refuses (read: almost pushes Pierre off the roof in his haste to distance himself from said sandwich). 

“He never makes me jam,” Esteban huffs. It’s stupid, but Esteban would have at least appreciated the gesture of offering jam, not that he would accept it anyway, because what if it’s poisoned? Or worse, eating it turns him into a frog.

“That’s because you don’t like him,” Pierre says, which—

“Because he’s ruining my life!” Esteban kicks at one of the roof tiles. It’s probably a bad idea but he doesn’t care. Pierre raises an eyebrow and smartly doesn’t comment on anything other than “whatever you say”, choosing instead to talk about the time he got caught trying to steal baked potatoes from the kitchen. The soft rambling in an accent Esteban understands and revels in its familiarity - and here the image of a boy stupidly older than he is is conjured up in his brain - helps Esteban recenter himself, but as he looks at the night sky, twinkly and shiny and infinite, he is, for the first time, uncertain.

.

The weird part about how Checo is supposed to be his aide is that Esteban feels the aid in the strangest facets of his life: he’ll be sleeping one day and wake up with a schedule written in ink on his desk, along with circles on certain dates like  _ Alchemy test, pendejo _ , but then he’s forced to eat dirt when Checo knocks him over with his goddamned shiny-as-spit polearm in the evening. There’ll be an extra glass of milk on the table when it’s noontime but also one less candy for snack, the method for a mathematics question he hasn’t done yet conveniently circled in his notes and yet no solution given.

At this point, he’s surprised he hasn’t eaten any worms yet; is what he tells his father as he crawls into his bed that night, whiny and pouty and looking perfect for the part of the affronted child. His father sits there with nothing more than a beatific smile on his face, designed to pacify him into sullen silence once he realises nothing will change by Esteban complaining about his aide to his father. 

“You have to learn to get along with him,” he gently chides, in that tone that makes Esteban feel like he’s being herded somehow. First Pierre, but his father? The one person who’s supposed to have his back? It’s like the universe is conspiring to ensure that he and Checo eventually tear each other apart somehow. “He’s good for you,  _ chéri _ . You didn’t miss your alchemy test last week.” The surprise goes unsaid, but Esteban can hear it anyway; his teacher must have ecstatically gushed about his performance - but more likely his submission of the test in the first place - to his father. 

“But he beats me all the time during fighting practice,” Esteban says, and sticks out his bottom lip in a sorry attempt to seem pitiable. “For fun!”

“Because he’s older than you. And he helps you improve,” his father moves to sit up, but he doesn’t make it all the way before his arms lose strength again and he has to be propped up by the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed. Esteban doesn’t know what to say to that display: it’s not a secret that his father is weak now, but his father wouldn’t appreciate Esteban pointing that out for sure, so he instead snuggles into his side and tries to put his arms around his midriff in a feeble attempt to comfort. The smile that graces his father’s mouth is a mockery of the one he used to wear four years ago. “One day you’ll own this estate, so you need to be the best. And Checo will help you with that.”

Esteban doesn’t have the heart to disagree, so the next day he struggles a little less when Checo pins his shirt to a tree with the point of his polearm, sharp edge almost digging into the flesh of his shoulder, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Checo - he raises an eyebrow and yanks the point out of the wood faster than he normally would. 

“What’s wrong with you.” It’s not phrased like a question but a statement. Esteban thinks it’s the accent.

“I—” Esteban’s face glows with the start of a heat creeping up his neck; this is what he gets for being agreeable? Esteban almost wants to retract whatever treatment he’s decided Checo should be treated with when Checo himself interjects again.

“It was more fun when you put up a fight,” and Checo is smiling a strange, lopsided smile that looks nothing like the ones he offers to his father or the servants, one that shows more of neat white rows of teeth, the start of a too-sharp canine, a smile that Esteban actually… doesn’t hate. “Struggle more.”

“ _ T'es un salaud. _ ” Esteban wishes he sounded more bitter.

“Your father would be disappointed,” Checo says, but it’s got no heat to it: rather, it’s the friendliest Esteban has heard him, coupled with that strange smile, the polearm long forgotten on the ground, the sound of it hitting the ground barely framing his memory. “The young master is too vulgar for his own good,” he snipes with more smile than aggression, bending down to pick up the polearm at the same time Esteban picks up his practice sword from where it’d been knocked out of his hand previously in the clearing.

“You talk too much,” Esteban says, more bark than bite, and readies his stance again.

.

Esteban is just finishing telling Checo the story of when he first rode a horse when Pierre rounds the corner.

“—and the little shit bucked me off—”

“Language.”

“The  _ horse _ . Bucked me off.” Esteban rolls his eyes.

“You’re too skinny, that’s why,” Checo closes his fingers around Esteban’s wrist, and they unsurprisingly loop around it with little difficulty. Esteban’s face flushes hot, because he’s definitely going to grow stronger, he’s not going to stay skinny and small forever,  _ right _ ? The retort is lying on the tip of his tongue when Pierre rounds the corner and catches Checo’s hand around Esteban’s wrist.

Pierre catches Checo’s hand around Esteban’s wrist and—

“Don’t. Fucking. Say anything.” A smile is already sneaking onto Pierre’s dastardly, cunning face and Esteban is going to  _ murder  _ him in cold blood. With his organs everywhere. He’ll hang his head on a flagpole. Or better yet, make him disappear.

“I didn’t see anything,” Pierre says with a wink and promptly un-rounds the corner.

.

This is not to say that Esteban has taken a liking to his aide. In fact, in most cases, it is far from the case. Checo puts ice cubes down the front of his shirt when he can’t wake up in the morning and in return Esteban puts sand in his boots before they head out for training. It’s more of a push-and-pull: when Checo decides to be nice, Esteban will be nice in return. If Checo decides to be his normal self again, then Esteban will repay the favour tenfold, which is why when Checo gives him a jar of that coveted berry jam on his sixteenth birthday, a rich orangey-yellow in the glass, Esteban pulls him out the door after dinner and takes out the ladder from the shed, leaning it against a part of the outer wall where the roof doesn’t stick out so much.

“Climb the ladder,” Esteban instructs with a sniff, crossing his arms. “We don’t have all night.” Thankfully, Checo climbs the ladder without much complaint, albeit mildly confused, and Esteban follows after him with much more agility, thereafter climbing up the roof where there’s a little place to sit, complete with a small picnic basket Esteban had placed up there beforehand filled with sandwiches stuffed with that honey-bright jam.

(It reminds him of another time, another era long gone. Back when Pierre hadn’t gone to boarding school and he hadn’t talked to Checo at all beyond  _ hello _ and  _ fuck off _ , when he’d refused a bite of a sandwich just because it had Checo’s jam in it.)

“...What is this for.” That stupid accent always making questions sound like statements. That stupid smile that always looks better when it’s real and too sharp and unabashedly confident.

“It’s the place I go to when I want to see the stars,” Esteban says as smoothly as he can, careful not to trip on any stray emotions. “They’re bright up here.” And they are - because it’s autumn,  _ Pegasus  _ has become visible in the sky, the shapes barely strung together by bright little spots, still the same as the first time he mapped all of them out on a piece of parchment. Checo looks up and stares, and stares, and Esteban is about to tell him that he doesn’t have to keep looking if he doesn’t find stars all that interesting when Checo himself breaks the silence with a murmur.

“I never saw stars where I was from,” he says, but it’s soft, gentle, so unlike him that it instantly puts Esteban on high alert. “The sky was always dark, and there was no sun. The clouds always blocked it, so my father said.”

“You had a father?” It’s difficult to keep the surprise out of his voice, but he always thought Checo just… started to exist. Like wind and clouds and other unexplainable happenings. It’s difficult, imagining Checo with a parental figure that isn’t his father - or a real parental figure at all, if he’s being honest.

“I did.” Checo’s expression shutters, metal and hard and unmoving, and Esteban surmises that that will be all Checo will say about the matter. “He named me Sergio.”

“ _ Sergio _ ? Lame,” Esteban nudges at Checo’s ribs. “I like Checo.” 

“I’m flattered.” Esteban rolls his eyes but doesn’t push back, so they drink out of little mugs of hot chocolate in the picnic basket in silence, feeling the bite of winter wind blowing through the grasslands. The stars shine like dozens of little white lanterns, which reminds Esteban—

“I wished for you when I was younger, you know?” Esteban turns to look at Checo, who is looking at him intensely, one eyebrow raised. The face that says _ tell me more _ . “I wished for a minion.”

The blank face he gets in return is enough to send him into another fit of laughter, and through the laughs he can see Checo smiling too, a small one that looks equal parts painfully fond and trying to hold more laughter in. It’s so much more domestic than Esteban would have expected it to be, warm and fuzzy and  _ easy _ , all this banter echoing in the night punctuated by flashes of firefly light. 

They’re sipping hot chocolate and eating berry jam sandwiches in the dead of night and the warm feeling is spreading through Esteban’s chest. “The jam is really good,” he says around a bite of sandwich, because that’s just how good it is. “You should sell it in the market. Did your father teach you how to make it?”

Checo’s mouth presses into a thin line, and Esteban immediately wants to retract that question because what’s wrong with him, he already knows Checo doesn’t want to talk about his father? He’s about to tell Checo that he doesn’t have to answer when Checo opens his mouth.

“I taught myself. There wasn’t much food at all in my country, so my father couldn’t cook me anything but porridge,” Checo smiles again but it’s rueful, bitter. And Esteban is thinking about young Checo surviving on nothing but porridge when he himself ate so well as a child - still doing so now - not being able to see the sun or the stars, his home country sounding absolutely awful and there’s nothing that Checo can do about it, now that he’s here in a foreign country with none of his countrymen with him. It sounds so much worse than his childhood that Esteban doesn’t know how to respond, so they sit in silence once again.

“Did I tell you how I got my magic?” Esteban asks. It’s a stupid question because he knows Checo doesn’t know, but the mood feels right to reveal weirdly personal things. It might be the birthday feeling, or Checo’s warmth against his side, but Esteban doesn’t mind telling him, is what he thinks as Checo shakes his head.

(An Esteban a year ago would have rioted at the notion.)

“My father was trapped in a hole covered in branches, and no one could remove the branches until my magic manifested and got my father out,” he says, but there’s no pride in it - there’s no pride in your father almost dying, no pride in facing dire situations, no pride in earning a power that only manifests under the heaviest of trauma - and Checo must at least know what dire feels like, is what Esteban thinks. Checo laughs drily.

“A story for a story,” he says, raising the little mug up. Esteban meets it halfway with his own and they down the last of their hot chocolate, feeling cold and warm and close and so, so far away. Esteban meets Checo halfway and finds a memory of a star-filled autumn sky, sitting on the roof, the remnants of a berry jam in a pretty glass jar, the unveiling of a few secrets. All the servants have gone to bed, retired to their quarters. The yellow lamplight of a maid’s cottage shines onto the grass. And as Esteban looks at the sky, shiny and infinite and infinitely lonely, with Checo’s hand mere inches from his own—

For the first time in a long time, he feels certain.

.

When Esteban wakes up late the next morning for penmanship class, he finds ice cubes down his shirt and immediately jolts awake. 

When Checo puts on his shoes the next evening for training, he finds heaps of sand packed right into the toes of his boots.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.  
>  _― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping_
> 
> am going to put it out there that there's supposed to be a sequel - that is, the original plot was way too long for what i am physically capable of writing - but... whether it ever comes out is the question


End file.
